The Innocent Adventuress Part 23

"But you must not tell them _you_ have found me," said Maria Angelina, overwhelmed with tragedy again. She seemed fated, she thought in dreadful humor, to spend the night with young men! And to have been lost by one and found by another!

"It will be so much worse," she said pleadingly. "Could you not just show me the way and let me go----?"

"So much worse?" His face was very grave and gentle. "So much worse? I don't think I understand."

"So _very_ much worse. To have been found like this--Oh, promise me to say nothing about it. I know that I can trust you."

"I think you had better tell me all about it, Signorina."

He saw that dark misery, like a film, swim blindingly over her wide eyes.

"I cannot."

He considered a moment before he spoke again.

"If you really do not want any one to know that I found you I am willing to hold my tongue. But don't you see what a lot of ridiculous deception that would involve? You would have to make up all sorts of little things. And then, after all, you'd be sure to say something--one always does--and let it all out----"

Maria Angelina looked at him pathetically and a sudden impulse stabbed him to say hastily, "I'll fall in with any plan you want to make. Only wait to decide until you feel rested. Then perhaps we can decide together. . . . And now, if you are really getting dry----"

"Truly, I am, Signor Elder. I am indeed dry and hot."

"Then you'd better make up your mind to curl up on that cot over there and sleep."

"I couldn't sleep."

There was truth beneath Maria Angelina's quick disclaimer. Exhausted as she was, her mind was vividly awake, now, excited with the strangeness of her presence there.

Her mortification at his finding her was gone. He was so rarely kind, so pleasantly matter of fact. He was as gayly undisturbed as if the heavens rained starving young girls upon him every night! And somehow she had known he was like this . . . but he was like no one else that she had known. . . .

Her mind groped for a comparison. For an instant she vainly tried to picture Paolo Tosti doing the honors to such a guest--but that picture was unpaintable.

This Barry Elder was chivalry itself; he was kindness and comfort--and he was a strange, stirring excitement that flung a glamour over the disaster of the hour.

It was like a little hush before the final storm, a dim dream before the nightmare enfolded her again.

Her eyes followed him as he turned out the kerosene lamp, which was sputtering, and flung fresh logs upon the hearty fire. Overhead the rain droned, like monotonous fingers upon a keyboard, and beside her Sandy slept noisily, with sudden whimpers.

Barry's eyes, meeting the wistful dark ones, smiled responsively, and Maria Angelina felt a queer tightening within her, as if some one had tied a band about her heart.

"You don't have such fires in Italy," he observed, dropping down upon the rug across from her, and refilling that battered pipe of his. "I well remember when I ordered a fire and the _cameraria_ came in with a bunch of twigs."

Madly Maria Angelina fell upon the revelation.

"You have been in Italy!"

"Oh, more than once! But all before the war."

"And you have been in Rome? Oh, to think of that! But where did you stay? Whom did you know there, Signor?"

Barry grinned. "Head waiters!"

"You knew no Romans, then? Oh, but that was a pity."

"I can well believe it, Signorina!"

"Oh, Rome can be very gay--though I am not out in society myself, and know so little. . . . What did you do, then? I suppose you went to the Forum and the Vatican and the Via Appia like all the tourists and drove out to the Coliseum by moonlight?"

Delightedly she laughed as Barry Elder confirmed her account of his activities.

"Me, I have never seen the Coliseum by moonlight," she reported plaintively, adding with eager wistfulness, "And did you buy violets on the Spanish Stairs? And throw a penny into the Trevi fountain to ensure your return? And do you remember the street that turns off left, the Via Poli? From there you come quick to my house, the Palazzo Santonini----"

"And do you really live in a palace?" It was Barry's turn to question.

"A really truly palace? And is your father a really truly prince?"

"Nothing so great! He is a count--but of a very old family, the Santonini," Maria Angelina explained with becoming pride.

"And is your mother of a very old----"

"My mother is American--the cousin of Mrs. Blair. But Mamma has never been back in America--she is too devoted to us, is Mamma, and she has so much to look after for Papa. Papa is charming but he does not manage."

"That makes complications," said Barry gravely.

"And Francisco, my brother, is just like him. He is always running bills, now that he is in the army. And he was so brave in the war that Mamma cannot bear to be cross. He will have to marry an heiress, that boy," she sighed and Barry Elder's eyes lighted in amus.e.m.e.nt.

"How many of you are there?" he wanted interestedly to know, and vivaciously Maria Angelina informed him of her sisters, her life, her lessons, the rare excursions, the pension at the seash.o.r.e, the engagement of her sister Lucia and Paolo Tosti.

And absorbedly Barry Elder listened, his eyes on her changing face. When she paused he flung in some question or some anecdote of his own times in Italy and Sandy was often roused by unseasonable laughter, and thudded his tail in sleepy friendliness before dozing off to his dreams again.

Then like a flash, as swiftly as it had come, the excited glow of recollection was an extinguished flame, leaving her shivering before a nearer memory.

For Barry Elder asked one question too many. He brought the present down upon them.

"And how do you like America?" he asked. "Has it been good fun for you up here?"

Only the blind could have missed the change that came over the girl's face, blotting out its laughter and etching in queer, startled fear.

"It has been--very gay," she stammered.

Despairingly she asked herself why she still tried to hide her story from him since in the morning it must all come out. He would know all about her then. And what must he be thinking already of her stammered evasions?

Oh, if only on that yesterday, which seemed a thousand yesterdays away, she had stayed closely by her Cousin Jane! If she had not let her folly wreck all her life!

Bitterly ironic to know that all the time Barry Elder was here, at hand.

If only she had known! Had he just come?

She wondered and asked the question.

And at that Barry's face changed as if he had remembered something he would have been as glad to forget.